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"What is it?" asked Manning and Greig eagerly. "Love." Both Britz and Manning were skilled in the art of concealing their emotions. Their brains might be working furiously, their hearts throbbing with excitement, they might be laboring under the greatest stress of mind, yet they were able to command a placid exterior, unruffled as polished ivory.
Moreover, his vigilance is never relaxed. Permitted to roam at will, however, he is invariably his own most relentless enemy, working unconsciously to encompass his own destruction. For some minutes Britz debated with himself as to the most profitable course to pursue with regard to the secretary. Finally an idea flashed across his mind, and he resolved to carry it into effect.
"Well, I sort of pity him," replied Britz. "The warden was present, of course, when he made the confession. Timson can get out of jail on a writ of habeas corpus. Of course, he'll be rearrested immediately and tried, with the deputy marshal, for having brought about the escape of the man that was sentenced to prison.
Collins had sunk into that state of complete despondency wherein even the primal instinct of self-preservation is weakened to the point of extinction. Britz had applied the much-abused and publicly misunderstood third degree in a manner shrewdly calculated to shatter the resisting qualities of the victim's will.
But the latter's death had destroyed all hope of aid from that direction. The letter, far from furnishing incriminating evidence against anyone, clearly established Ward's and Mrs. Collins's interest in keeping Whitmore alive. Nevertheless Britz decided to retain the note on the bare chance that subsequent developments might give it a changed aspect. Mrs.
But all the evidence, taken as a whole, leads irresistibly to the conclusion that one of them shot Whitmore. There is not the slightest trace of any outside agency having been employed." "But if they're individually innocent, how can they be collectively guilty?" demanded the chief. "You've misconceived my meaning," said Britz. "You know, in a general way, what has been accomplished in the case.
"He might have committed suicide, and the clerks, out of regard for their employer, substituted pistols in order to make it appear like murder," joined Greig. "Perhaps," replied Britz. "Relatives and friends frequently endeavor to give a case of suicide the aspect of murder." "But you don't really believe it of this case?" asked the coroner. "I do not," confessed Britz.
And in a criminal investigation a single error may destroy every chance of success, just as a single error on the part of the criminal may destroy all the safeguards which he has so carefully thrown around him. At the Seventy-second street station of the subway Britz bade his companions good night.
"But if none of the accused was within miles of Whitmore's office on the morning in question, how do you connect any of them with the actual commission of the crime?" Britz rose and took up a position at the side of the desk, where he could see every fleeting emotion that might cross the faces of all the others in the room.
The substitution of prisoners tended to involve Beard, yet it gave not the least hint of the motive that actuated the killing of Whitmore. Nor did it reveal how the crime was committed. That it would prove of importance, of vital significance in solving the crime, Britz believed implicitly. But, such are the complexities in all human things, that the possibility of error is never eliminated.
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